Director, Product Management — Core Database Engine & AI

Teradata; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 4,000,000 - 6,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Teradata seeks a senior product leader to drive strategy and execution for the core database engine, shaping optimizer, runtime, and workload management with a focus on AI-enabled workloads. You will own the multi-year roadmap, collaborate with senior engineers, and guide roadmap trade-offs across performance, cost, and complexity.

You will lead SQL language evolution, integrate GenAI/ML inside the engine, and ensure openness with Iceberg/Delta Lake formats, while delivering measurable

Qualifications

• 15+ years in databases, query engines, or distributed data systems.
• Expert understanding of database internals: planning, optimization, and MPP.
• Strong SQL skills with views on language design and compatibility.
• Hands-on performance mindset: reading plans and running benchmarks.
• Solid understanding of LLMs and AI agents in database design.
• Knowledge of Snowflake, Databricks, and ClickHouse architecture.

Responsibilities

• Strategy: Own the engine vision and multi-year roadmap with senior leaders.
• AI and agents: Rethink core components for AI workloads and integrate GenAI/ML.
• Optimizer/execution/workload: optimize queries, reuse results, guard plan stability.
• Performance: work on query plans, benchmarks, regressions, KPI suite ownership.
• Open Table formats: own Iceberg/Delta Lake integration and stats automation.
• SQL interface: design features for safer, expressive ANSI SQL.

Skills

Database internals

Performance mindset

LLMs and AI

Architecture knowledge

SQL expertise

Education

B.S. in Computer Science

MS/PhD in databases/ML

Tools

Snowflake

Databricks

ClickHouse

Job description

Our Company

At Teradata, we believe that people thrive when empowered with better information. Teradata Autonomous Knowledge Platform activates enterprise intelligence by unifying data, knowledge and business context to achieve tangible outcomes. With Teradata, organizations can provide agents with full context for impact when it matters. Our solution lets businesses connect and scale on premises, in the cloud, or through a hybrid approach. Teradata delivers real business value with AI.

What You'll Do

In this role, you will lead product strategy and execution for Teradata's core database engine: the massively parallel query engine behind every workload on the platform. You will shape the roadmap across the optimizer, execution runtime, workload management, and Global Planner, and own how the engine performs on native storage, cloud object storage, and open table formats such as Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake. This role sits at the intersection of the database engine and AI. AI agents are becoming the dominant consumers of enterprise data, issuing high volumes of exploratory, speculative queries, while GenAI and machine learning can improve the engine from the inside. Every core component needs to be rethought in this light, and you will lead that rethink and turn it into a roadmap engineering can build. Two things anchor the role. Performance: you will spend significant time inside real workloads, query plans, and benchmarks, working with engineering to deliver measurable gains release after release. SQL: you will be the steward of Teradata SQL, the surface customers live in, making its syntax, semantics, and ergonomics simpler, more expressive, and safer for developers, analysts, and AI agents.

• Strategy: Own the engine vision and multi-year roadmap, co-owning architecture direction with senior engineering leaders and making principled trade-offs across performance, cost, and complexity.
• AI and agents: Lead the rethink of every core engine component for AI agents as the new dominant workload, and apply GenAI and ML inside the engine to make it faster and more autonomous.
• Optimizer, execution, and workload management: Agents send many redundant queries. Explore optimizing across queries, sharing intermediate results, and returning early or approximate answers. Apply learned cardinality and cost models and LLM-assisted rewrite, with guardrails that protect plan stability. Define how workload management absorbs bursty machine traffic through agent identity, priorities, and budgets.
• Performance: Work hands-on with engineering on query plans, regressions, and bottlenecks. Own the benchmark suite and KPIs (latency, concurrency, plan stability, price-performance), including agentic workloads, and build regression gates into releases.
• Open Table formats: Own the engine side of Iceberg and Delta Lake (scan planning, pruning, pushdown, write paths) so customers never trade performance for openness. Automate statistics, clustering, and compaction with AI.
• SQL language and query interface: Design features that turn complex problems into simple, readable queries, reduce footguns while keeping power and backward compatibility, and stay aligned with ANSI SQL. Make the dialect something agents can safely generate and execute, and let agents steer with cost estimates, plan explanations, and hints.

Who You'll Work With

You will work with senior database engineering leaders, performance engineering, AI platform teams, the open table format product team, sales engineering, and executive leadership across the US, Europe, and India. This role starts as an individual contributor, leading through technical depth and influence and mentoring Staff-level PMs. It may grow into managing a team of product managers.

What Makes You a Qualified Candidate

• 15+ years in databases, query engines, or distributed data systems, including senior product management or equivalent principal or staff engineering experience
• Expert understanding of database internals: query planning, cost-based optimization, execution models, and MPP trade-offs
• Deep SQL expertise: a heavy SQL user (data engineer, analyst, or DBA) with strong opinions on language design, ergonomics, and compatibility
• A hands-on performance mindset: reading query plans, designing benchmarks, and finding root causes with senior engineers
• A strong working understanding of LLMs and AI agents, and an informed view on how they change database design and how ML can improve database internals
• Architecture-level knowledge of Snowflake, Databricks, and ClickHouse, and fluency in lakehouse architecture and open table formats
• Degree in Computer Science or a related field; an MS or PhD in databases, distributed systems, or ML for systems is a plus

What You'll Bring

• First-principles thinking and good taste: willingness to question long-standing database assumptions, a preference for elegance over verbosity, customer obsession, daily use of GenAI tools, and the credibility to earn the trust of senior engineers
• The ability to read research critically, separate promise from hype, and design experiments to prove value, with a track record of setting multi-year platform strategy
• A plus: experience designing SQL features or language extensions, hands-on work with optimizers or learned database components, open-source contributions, or publications at SIGMOD, VLDB, or CIDR

Why We Think You'll Love Teradata

We prioritize a people-first culture because we know our people are at the very heart of our success. We embrace a flexible work model because we trust our people to make decisions about how, when, and where they work. We focus on well-being because we care about our people and their ability to thrive both personally and professionally. We are an anti-racist company because our dedication to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is more than a statement. It is a deep commitment to doing the work to foster an equitable environment that celebrates people for all of who they are.

Teradata invites all identities and backgrounds in the workplace. We work with deliberation and intent to ensure we are cultivating collaboration and inclusivity across our global organization. We are proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, ancestry, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, or related conditions), national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, medical condition, genetic information, gender identity or expression, military and veteran status, or any other legally protected status.